Changing how America works for partisan benefit is un-American

August 23, 2022

The American left believes that the Republicans are “radical,” and “dangerous.”

“In America, in the face of what the Supreme Court and the radical right wing are trying to do to the fundamental rights of every American, we, the coalition of the sane, owe something better to our children and our grandchildren. We need to win and we need to keep our promises to the people who elected us,” said Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker at a Democratic brunch.

MSNBC host Joy Reid contributed her opinion, calling Republicans "dangerous," back on Election Night 2020. 

Responding to Rachel Maddow’s comment about Republicans “fear mongering” Loudoun County school board members over getting vaccinated, wearing masks, and “made-up stuff about racial indoctrination," Reid said, “For Democrats to really fight that, they would have to be willing to say what you have said on your show, I think we’ve all said a version of it, you have to be willing to vocalize that these Republicans are dangerous."

Another MSNBC face, Tiffany Cross, suggested that “civil war” was just around the corner. 

“You have millions of people tuning into a propaganda network every night,” Cross said. “As if that were not bad enough, that’s an extremist network itself, you have these fringe pop-up outlets from OANN to Newsmax. Then you have the social media component. The train has left the station. There is no dealing with the rhetoric. At this point, we need serious conversations around preparing for actual violence. People keep saying a Civil War is coming. I would say the Civil War is here.”

So, according to these three sources, one an elected Democrat and the other two TV journalists, Republicans are radicals who are trying to change the country into something it has never been, and should not become.

People who are doing such things are acting against the best interests of the country. Could they not be classified as “un-American?” 

Well, if un-American behavior and beliefs are the subject, there is much more of that than these few examples.

Citing Molotov cocktails at pregnancy centers, rampant crime in major cities, and an open border, Republican National Committee spokeswoman Emma Vaughn suggested that we “Call out the left on their threatening hyperbole, then we will talk.”

There’s more. Democrats want to make major changes to aspects of Constitutional standards, such as junking the 233-year-old Electoral College; ending the 180-year-old Senate filibuster and the 150-year-old, nine-person Supreme Court. They also advocate bringing in two more states and ending 60 years of a 50-state nation.

The New York Times published an opinion piece essentially calling for the U.S. Constitution to be jettisoned. And Democrat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tore up the State of the Union address on national TV. She also set up the January 6 Committee that strongly resembled a trial where the prosecution selected the judge and defense attorneys, and was the only side in the questioning of witnesses.

We saw illegal protests outside the homes of some Supreme Court Justices ignored by the Justice Department. Democrats favor defunding the police and “progressive” prosecutors give criminals more consideration than their victims.

And then there is the Time magazine piece in which author Molly Ball gloated over how Democrats had won the 2020 election by essentially rigging it. “That classic article by Molly Ball in February of 2021 where she gushed, she was giddy outlining what she called a conspiracy to change radically the voting laws, to inject four or 500 million dollars to alter the way we voted for centuries so that 70 percent of the votes would not be cast on Election Day, even as the rejection rate would decline by a magnitude of seven or eight,” Victor Davis Hanson explained.

Republicans did not call parents of school children “domestic terrorists” for expressing concerns about controversial on-goings in their classrooms, or fail to control the southern border.

Dangerous rhetoric from the left led to an assassination attempt on a U.S. Supreme Court Justice, and a shooting at a Congressional baseball practice, 

The left is so fired up that it even criticizes a well-known liberal Democrat attorney. Alan Dershowitz is a self-proclaimed liberal Democrat who voted against Donald Trump. Yet many Democrats/liberals condemn him for his defense of Trump’s situations. They either don’t understand what is actually going on, or they don’t care. The radical left apparently believes that if it reflects positively on Trump, it must be a sin or a crime.

But what Dershowitz did is what any good, honest lawyer would and should have done: defend a person’s constitutional and legal rights, without political bias. That is also what the Supreme Court’s originalist justices did in the Roe v. Wade matter: they acted on the standards enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.

It’s easy to toss around terms to denigrate others, and there is a tendency among like-thinkers to accept these things without question.

But when the subject is that one political group is un-American, the evidence is heavily against the liberals/Democrats.

They are the ones who want to change the country to make controlling the country easier. They are the ones who are acting against the country.

Democrat officials and policies moving us in the wrong direction

President Joe Biden told the world last week in a televised announcement that there was no inflation in July. “Zero!” he said. 

That, of course, is totally upside-down. Inflation still exceeded 9 percent in July. What Biden should have said is a very different story: Inflation did not increase in July. It also did not decrease in July. The status quo was due to some prices coming down a little while other prices increased a bit more.

Biden also celebrated a nominal decrease in gasoline and diesel fuel prices, ignoring that these prices are still $2- to $3-higher than when he took office.

The enigma that is New York’s new mayor — Eric Adams, who is a former police officer, state senator, and Brooklyn Borough president — is in the news, once again.  Adams’ election filled the hearts of many with excitement and hope, following the disastrous reign of former Mayor Bill de Blasio.

Under de Blasio, crime increased and was rampant, undoing the hard work and strong results of former Mayor Ruddy Giuliani, who followed former Mayor David Dinkins, and made the City a much safer one.

Adams’ reaction to illegal aliens being bused to New York City by Texas Governor Greg Abbott is hypocrisy at its best, and ignores the disastrous effects of the relaxed enforcement of immigration policy by the Biden administration. Instead, Adams blames the Texas governor.

Texas sees more illegals coming across its border each day than the total Adams has welcomed to New York on buses from Texas.

We have been told how proud New York City is to be a “sanctuary” city. And Adams didn’t complain when the Biden administration sent thousands of illegals by air to places around the country, including New York City, in the dark of night. But suddenly, when Gov. Abbott sends a few busloads to Adams’ city and Washington, DC, to help make the point of how badly Texas and other border states are suffering under this insane relaxed border policy, Adams thinks the world is coming to an end, and it’s all Abbott’s fault.

This is not Adams’ only failure. He has done little to fight the increasing crime wave, for example. But it is the topic he uses to try to cover up his thus-far failed tenure.

The Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act was recently passed by the U.S. Senate. Vice President Kamala Harris, in her position as the President of the Senate, broke the 50-50 tie and voted for the measure. It will add 87,000 new IRS agents over the next few years. The IRS employed more than 78,000 people during fiscal 2021, so this measure will more than double the size of the IRS.

Critics of the measure have produced some comparisons of the number of new employees: One photo showed an 86,000-seat football stadium filled with fans, which is less than the number of new agents; that number is about as large as a U.S. Army Corps; and it makes the IRS larger than the Pentagon, the State Department, the FBI, and the Border Patrol combined.

It has been titled by some critics as “Biden’s Shadow Army.” Another critic pointed out that the new agents are aiming at billionaires, who are rich American individuals and companies. There are only about 1,000 of those, the critic said, but 87,000 agents are being hired to audit their tax returns.

The newly staffed IRS, it has been said, will to have to go after middle- and low-income families and small and mid-sized businesses, rather than only businesses making more than $1 billion, and families making $400,000 or more, as we have been told.

“The IRS will have to target small and medium businesses because they won’t fight back,” Joe Hinchman, executive vice president at National Taxpayers Union Foundation, told The New York Post.

“We’ve seen this play out before … the IRS says ‘We’re going after the rich’ but when you’re trying to raise that much money, the rich can only get you so far.”

“The approach here is to double the IRS workforce, take the leash off, and see how much they can collect,” Hinchman adds. “I think they’ll collect it but it will be quite painful.”

A requirement for the new agents is that they will be armed and will have agreed to use deadly force if needed. All of this is necessary to collect under-reported taxes, we are told. The party that is working hard on strict gun control is also arming federal employees.

This idea, considered crazy and reckless by many, is not needed. The “difficulties” the government sees with tax collections can easily be solved by simplifying the tax code to remove the “loopholes” that enable companies and individuals to avoid taxes. And then require them to pay a reasonable rate of taxes, like 10-15 percent. 

And hire 87,000 new Border Patrol agents to fix the disgraceful situation at the southern border and restore our immigration policies that allow in only those who follow the proper procedure, and find those that were allowed to enter illegally, and put them on the right course by waiting in Mexico until their hearing date.

Justice must not be allowed to be used as a partisan weapon

“Maybe it was the death threat delivered by a fellow law-enforcement officer while he stood shackled in belly chains.

“Perhaps it was being described as a ‘terrorist’ by a federal judge who will preside over his trial.

“It could have been being released on bail by a U.S. magistrate judge in Tennessee, only to be ordered held until trial by a U.S. district judge in Washington D.C.

“Former sheriff’s deputy Ronald McAbee, 28, of Tennessee, has faced a difficult road since being indicted for alleged criminal actions at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

“Arguably the most trying situation for McAbee was being denied bail for nearly a year based on video evidence that his attorney now says exonerates him.”

This is how a story in The Epoch Times begins about the strange situation Ronald McAbee found himself in. McAbee had served more than seven years as a sheriff’s deputy and correctional officer in Tennessee and Georgia, and was wearing a “Sheriff” garment that day

During the chaotic situation, McAbee assisted two people who were in trouble. One incident was that “Several times he tried to render lifesaving aid to a dying Rosanne Boyland, 34, of Kennesaw, Georgia,” The Times reported. The other incident was when McAbee saw Metropolitan Police officer Andrew Wyatt down, and tried to help him. That action caused others involved in the riot to call McAbee names. While helping Wyatt, the two exchanged friendly comments.

However, for some reason, Metropolitan Police saw fit to charge McAbee with several crimes, according to The Times. “Charges included assaulting, resisting, or impeding a federal officer, two counts of civil disorder, entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds with a deadly or dangerous weapon, disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds with a deadly or dangerous weapon, engaging in physical violence in a restricted building or grounds with a deadly or dangerous weapon, and committing an act of physical violence in the Capitol grounds or buildings.”

From this point, the circus only gets worse. At a detention hearing last August, prosecutors played a video with audio turned off as evidence against McAbee. The magistrate judge ordered McAbee released until his trial.

Prosecutors, not pleased with the judge’s ruling, filed an emergency appeal. In a hearing the same day in U.S. District Court in Washington D.C., the federal judge stayed the order and scheduled hearings on the government’s motion to keep McAbee behind bars until trial. That hearing occurred on Sept. 22, and the judge ordered McAbee to be held in jail without bond.

During that hearing, the judge seemed to give a clue to his eventual decision to hold McAbee without bond. “When being shown a video with McAbee wearing body armor with a patch that read ‘Sheriff,’ the judge said, ‘That’s pretty outrageous,’ according to the official hearing transcript. Later, he said, “These videos are very disturbing,” and he agreed with the prosecutor’s assessment of the evidence.

“So, it appears clearly to this court that the defendant is pulling the officer back into the crowd of other terrorists,” the transcript quotes the judge as saying.

After another hearing on Oct. 13, 2021, the federal judge reversed the magistrate judge’s order, ruling that McAbee should be held pending trial. This despite the original judge’s statement that prosecutors did not show evidence that McAbee had been a danger in the eight months since his arrest, the federal judge still ruled that to protect the community, McAbee must remain in jail.

However, once the audio track of the video prosecutors used to create the image of McAbee as a “terrorist” was played, the story created by the prosecutors, and unquestioned by the federal judge, changed dramatically.

 “A break in McAbee’s case came when video investigator Gary McBride of Decatur, Texas, studied the bodycam footage shown in court, except with the audio track turned on. It painted a vastly different picture of what took place, McBride told The Epoch Times.

“The prosecutors did not play the audio of AW [Andrew Wyatt] and McAbee talking during this point,” McBride stated in his evaluation of the video. “McAbee is trying to save AW. Prosecutors didn’t play that in court.” McAbee is heard telling someone in the crowd who tried to grab at Wyatt, “No!” and “Quit!” He also told the Metropolitan Police that they had a man down, and was telling Wyatt, “I’m one of you, I’m one of you.”

So, we have prosecutors — who almost certainly knew that the audio portion of the video they used as evidence against McAbee would destroy, or at least weaken, their case — presented it to two judges without the audio being played. And the federal judge, who apparently did not ask about their being an audio track, believed the faulty evidence, and reached, and announced the conclusion that the man whose trial he would preside over was a “terrorist.”

This example of “justice” was performed by people who are paid to do their important jobs with honesty and integrity, and to render equal justice under the law. That is what we, as American citizens, expect and deserve. Ronald McAbee did not get justice.

Today’s political left is hard at work changing many things

August 2, 2022

One thing Joe Biden has done consistently is to support changing things. He immediately changed the U.S. energy status as an energy independent nation and a net exporter of energy achieved under Donald Trump, by restricting the nation’s ability to maintain that status.

And, during the Biden rule, definitions of well-known things have changed. A woman is a female of the species, with certain distinct qualities different from a male/man. Biden’s pick for Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, Ketanji Jackson Brown — a woman, by traditional standards — admitted in a Senate hearing that she was unable to define what a woman is. Today, many argue that the terms “woman” and “mother” are bad, and want to replace them with “birthing person.”

The recent porousness of the southern border allows tens of thousands of illegal aliens to enter the country each month. But the Biden administration has changed the definition of a “secure border” to include this travesty. The Border “Czar” — Vice President Kamala Harris — has done nothing to secure the border, and the Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, even said recently that the southern border is “not open” and is “secure.”

And just recently, when the second successive quarter of negative Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was announced, qualifying the U.S. as being in a recession — according to the long-standing measure used to determine what constitutes a “recession” — the Biden administration changed the definition of what constitutes a recession.

Yes, there are some positive economic factors, like a decent unemployment rate, and the recent negative GDP rate was not as low as the first one. But the high inflation rate and other factors show the overall economic picture as obviously negative.

Along with changing definitions, Biden is working to change the country. The standards and processes that have served us so well for more than two hundred years are no longer good enough. Packing the Supreme Court, doing away with the Senate filibuster, getting rid of the Electoral College are some of the things on the list.

It’s not that these features don’t work anymore, it’s that they are obstacles to the radical left agenda.

Biden rattled off a few positive economic figures recently, ending by saying, “That doesn’t sound like a recession to me,” just before making a hasty exit from the press. But let’s look at the numbers.

The Labor Force Participation Rate (LFPR), according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, is “the number of people in the labor force as a percentage of the civilian non-institutional population […] the participation rate is the percentage of the population that is either working or actively looking for work.”

The LFPR in January of 2017 was 62.8% (160,320,000 Americans) when Donald Trump took office. It rose to 63.4% (162,007,000 people) by Feb. 2018, meaning there were a good many more people working or looking for a job than at the beginning of Trump’s term. And then the pandemic hit.

The LFPR dropped to a low of 60.2% (160,074,000 people) in April of 2020, but rose to 61.4% (161,200,000 people) in Jan. 2021, a gain of 1.2% in 8 months, reflecting the re-entering of hundreds of thousands to the labor force.

It now stands at 62.2% as of June 2022. In the 17 months that Joe Biden has been President, the LFPR has risen 0.8%, representing a fraction of those who lost jobs or stopped working during the pandemic re-entering the labor force.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics describes the Unemployment Rate like this: “Perhaps the most widely known labor market indicator, this statistic reflects the number of unemployed people as a percentage of the labor force.”

The unemployment rate was 4.7% in January of 2017 when Donald Trump took office. In Feb 2020, when the effects of the pandemic hit, the unemployment rate was 3.5%.

It is now. 3.6% as of June 2022. While this is a good unemployment rate, it is not as good as it was before the pandemic.

After the 17 months Biden has been in office, as of the end of June, there are fewer people in the labor force today than there were when Trump took office, and when the pandemic began.

U.S. Chamber of Commerce tells us that right now, the latest data shows that we have over 11 million job openings in the U.S., but only 6 million unemployed workers looking for work. 

The most serious aspects of the pandemic are virtually over, and there are nearly twice as many unfilled jobs as there are people looking for work. The labor force is 3.2 million people smaller than before the pandemic. The difference is those who were working and have either retired, or no longer need to work due to government subsidy payments in the name of helping people get through the pandemic.

These numbers support the idea that the country is in a recession. There’s not enough lipstick to put on the recession pig to hide reality.